


Vegas Can Wait

by Amarylissa



Category: Strike Back
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-10-31 08:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10895598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amarylissa/pseuds/Amarylissa
Summary: Even when Michael Stonebridge gets ten kinds of shit beaten out of him, he’s always ready for the next conflict. This time, he’s enmeshed in an entirely different battle to anything he’s had to fight before. And what would happen to Scott without Stonebridge to keep him on track? When does a healthy appreciation for a bottle of beer turn into a problem? This diverges from the series about five minutes before the end of the final episode. Kinda dark, because leaving the army isn’t all about riding off into the sunset.





	1. Chapter 1

_The explosion knocks me off my feet, then I’m up again, running through the back streets. Sweat drips down my back. The pavement is uneven beneath my boots. Dust kicks up at every step and the scent of grilled meat cut through with charring fills the air. Bullets hit the wall, a box of oranges spills on the path and I leap over it. Somewhere a bird squawks angrily. It could be Tripoli, could be Beirut, all I know is I have to find him, because I’m his back up and without each other we’re good as dead. I’m flat out, round a corner, he must be right ahead but I can’t catch up. I stumble on a rock and I’m falling, waiting for the ground to smack in my face, for the bullet to reach me. As it all fades to black, I know I’ve failed._

 

It’s dark when I open my eyes, warm dry air, faint smell of disinfectant that’s always present. Sweat still on my back, I’m not running any more. I’m back in my body, back in my bed. Everything is as it always is, all but for a faint scent of cigarette smoke. I could dismiss it as a member of staff on a break, but it’s not just any cigarette, it’s Scott’s brand, and I breathe in. It’s him, cigarette smoke and sweat, and something exotic that carries me a thousand miles to that camp in the Sahara where I wrestled, sand in my mouth, my eyes, sand stuck to my back, where I pounded into that guy until Scott’s touch brought me back, where we slept next to each other on sand-dusted rugs, brief respite until everything blew up again.

  
I freeze, because there’s a familiar contact. A gun calloused hand touches my shoulder where the pyjama top has slipped, and I summon the strength to jerk my head over. In the darkness, there’s a shadow of a man standing next to my bed. I can’t see his face. Maybe this is still a dream because the gunfire has stopped and I’m no longer running, but Scott can’t be here and I don’t believe in ghosts.

 

I jerk awake and the night nurse is there, torch low to the ground.  
“You’ve been out for hours. How about some water then I’ll roll you onto the other side.”  
He raises the bed, I gulp at the water, choke, try again more slowly. I have a hazy recollection that they doped me up again, and it's still in my system because my lids are closing, however hard I try. The last thing I think of before sleep drags me under is Scott, the last thing I remember is the feel of his hand on my skin.

There’s a magpie squawking outside. It has been there every morning since damp grass and daffodils started to fill the air. Back indoors, she lifts my right arm. I can see her doing it, uncurling my fingers, futile task because they will curl back the moment she lets go. She wipes my palm with a flannel, then makes careful swipes with a towel to dry it. I imagine movement, send messages down nerve pathways that have laid unused for … I don’t know how long it is.

  
“Physio today,” she says brightly, like it’s any different to every other weekday. “Look, it’s sunny. That’s nice, isn’t it.” She’s talking about going outside, and there’s something niggling at the back of my mind as she pulls on the clothes that drag and scratch at my skin. The air in here is dry and I wish they’d open the window all the way, wish she’d talk to me like an adult. I clench my teeth as she tugs the sleeve. She fastens the buttons too, yanks the shirt to make it sit right. I can feel uneven crinkles of fabric in wedges that will lie against my back all day.

  
She calls for the orderly to help with the hoist. It’s hard to pick which part of life in here is the worst, but the hoist is a low point every day, because it cuts into my limbs as they raise me up, and my motor nerves might be fucked but my sensory system works erratically and maliciously. No feeling when I need it, stark stabs of pain when I least expect.

  
“Just relax, Michael,” the guy is saying, and I can tell that he’s just been outside for a smoke when it comes back to me. “Easy now!”

  
My arm jerks out, muscles in my side cramp as I’m half way between bed and chair. Scott. Did I dream him? I want to thrash my head from side to side, like I’ll see him behind a pastel curtain, down the side of a NHS standard issue cupboard. He’s not here. It was just some cruel drug-fuelled dream, the feel of his hand on my shoulder just a doped up fantasy.

  
There’s porridge on the plate, grey, glutinous mass. The metal spoon is cold and the porridge smears my lips as she aims for my mouth. Didn’t want porridge anyway, and I give up the battle to hold my head upright. The spoon slides up my cheek as my head drops, and she’s making little clicking noises as she lifts my chin, wipes my cheek, tilts the chair and the head rest until I’m stable. I close my eyes, don’t want to see the guy opposite being fed, don’t to watch his dribbles and spills like in a mirror.

  
I’m glad there’s no-one who knows me to see this. Grant died, then Dalton, and I don’t know if I really remember Julia sprawled on a Korean forest floor or if it’s just another of the nightmares that haunt my sleep. Locke is dead too, I think. I remember the chopper plunging into the forest, remember him closing his eyes for the last time. And I can see Scott’s body, sprawled in a pool of blood, because I wasn’t there to have his back. Another nightmare? I don’t know. There are bodies on the ground in front of the barn where we’re making our final stand. The flames are hot behind me, gunfire far too close and Scott is firing and firing until he’s out and …

  
“Open your mouth, Michael.” I open my eyes, half open my mouth, but it’s not enough and she clicks her teeth once more. “You need to eat or I’ll have to talk to Mr Healey about a feeding tube.”

  
I’ve had that before, and eating mush is supposed to be a step forward. The tube itched and tickled in my nose, my throat was always sore when it was in place, and the tape scratched my cheek. If I could have moved I’d have ripped it out, but all that happened when I tried was a futile spasm that echoed throughout the day. No tube, I let my head fall back, open my mouth, close my eyes again.

 

It’s not physio today, it’s aquatherapy, apparently. The days all merge, all but bacon on the weekend. The water’s warm enough that I can relax, and no-one asks me to open my eyes as I drift, let the therapists work each limb. My legs twitch and spasm at my attempts to move. It’s better in the pool, though, and the warmth of the water lets the therapists push and pull far more than they can do on land. Thinking about bacon brings back memories of every breakfast Kerry cooked me, another welcome home. Scott’s there too, from that morning he barged into the house. I was so angry, angry when she offered him breakfast, angry at myself, couldn’t risk her seeing me with him. And I want him now, wish he was alive, and out of Section 20, and safe, and a long, long way from everything we did together. I don’t remember how it ended, don’t remember the hospital really, don’t remember arriving here, don’t remember the last time I saw him. All I have is the nightmares, and the knowledge that I let him down.

  
“Try to relax, Michael, take a breath, slowly in and out, that’s right.” His voice drags me back to the pool. My right leg is going into spasm, and even the warmth of the water can’t stop the shiver that runs through me.

  
“Had enough now? Okay, let’s get you out.”

 

They leave me alone for a bit after that, in the big day room. There are a handful of other guys there, some up and talking, one or two that no amount of physio is going to help. My lack of words is a brick wall between us: the physio parks my chair over by the window with the others who don’t walk, can’t talk. I try to move my tongue like the speech therapist says, but it doesn’t do what I want. At first my heart raced every time I woke, didn’t know where I was, tried to call out, couldn’t manage a sound. Now though, locked in my body, I can bear the thought of never speaking again if only I knew how Scott died.

  
My shirt is rumpled under my back again. I’m still damp from the pool, can see the wrinkles on my fingertips. The magpie is out there still, and I want to see him but my head won’t move, not now. I could close my eyes again, think myself elsewhere, because my mind is full of all the places I’ve been, would rather be. South Africa was beautiful, and I’m back on the beach with that redheaded woman. The sun is warm on my skin, and she’s agreeing to, agreeing to … it all unravels too fast, and I’m wrestling Hanson to the floor. The concrete scrapes against my skin, and my weapon is gone, and Scott is running to help. My gun appears in Hanson’s hand, and it is my bullet that rips through Scott’s chest.

  
“Michael, Michael!” The care assistant is shaking me, my nails are digging into my palm, my fists clenched tight and my body rocks with spasms. My breath is clawing and jerking at my chest and even with my eyes open, the day room is obscured by that basement, by Scott’s blood. It’s all I can see, all I can feel until there’s a jab in my arm, and gradually the spasms slow. I fight against my lids closing, don’t want to go back there, can’t see it again.  
I’m woozy and dry mouthed when I stir I don’t know how much later. One of the carers who’s more clued up than the others has worked out a system for giving me a choice. “Day room or garden,” she asks. “Left for the day room, right for the garden.” I flick my eyes to the right, wonder why no-one else can be bothered.

  
With a flick of my eyes to the left for ‘Carry on’ and to the right for ‘Stop’, I’m pushed as far down the path as we’re allowed. She glances up at the sky, looks down at me.

  
“You could do with a bit of sun,” she says. “I’ll check on you in a while.”

  
It’s a relief to be left alone. The magpie is somewhere in the trees, can’t see him, can’t muster the effort to look because I would need to keep my lids open, would need to turn my head and all I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep, I want to dream again if it means that Scott will come and stand with his hand on my shoulder, but I know the dreams will turn into nightmares. I can feel an undercurrent of adrenaline battling the drugs, because out here I’m vulnerable. Hell, everywhere I’m vulnerable now Scott is gone and my body has failed me.

  
I wake, bile in my mouth, breath far too fast. I must have dozed for a moment, and the silent solitude of this end of the garden doesn’t appeal any more. My body aches and I want to shift so I push down with my arms. Nothing happens. I should be used to this now, and I think of days when Scott and I marched non-stop through forests, over streams, up mountains, sometimes because we were pursuing, sometimes because we were being pursued. We were going to get out, we were, this time. And if we didn’t, I always thought I’d go down fighting, not like this. I always thought I’d see him one more time, not watch him die over and over again, in my dreams.

 

I can’t keep my eyes open, sleep wins the fight. When I come round the sun has moved and I shiver. There’s a flicker of movement in the shrubbery, but there’s nothing there. I inhale, it’s there again, that faint scent of smoke from last night.

  
“Scott?” The word sounds in my head, I even make my lips move, but nothing comes out. I try again, but it’s wishful thinking, probably someone on a break sneaking a quick smoke.

  
There are footsteps on the path, and she puts her hands on my chair. “Let’s get you back in now, it’s getting chilly. It’s curry for dinner, that’ll be nice won’t it?”

  
My head lolls to the side as she bumps the chair back onto the path. The air is getting colder, scent of damp earth and dew, and I breathe in, trying to find cigarette smoke, trying to reassure myself it isn’t just a hallucination.

  
The curry is pulped to mush before I get it, and hospital cuisine tastes nothing like the food Scott and I ate in Mumbai. It’s film night too. I’m parked in a line of wheelchair users. Everyone else slots in on chairs and sofas, crutches mingling with prostheses. They only show comedies, no action films despite requests because dimming the lights is enough to bring on PTSD in some of the guys. There’s a card game going in one of the other rooms for those who don’t want to watch the film, for those who can hold a hand of cards. So I doze through an evening where half the guys in the room laugh more when someone farts than at the film, because I don’t have anything else to do, and I couldn’t do it if I did.

  
I hate the indignities of bedtime, try to think how it’s a step forward from the catheter, but it’s hard to imagine independent life when I can’t even hold my own dick. Bedtime means being undressed, and the hoist, because there’s too much of me for anyone to lift without hurting themselves, and I can’t haul my body from chair to bed. “It’ll come,” the physio says over and over, but it’s been months and still I’m no closer to going home, no home to go to if I was. As they pull up the thin blue cotton blankets, I miss Kerry. I miss the thought that she’s there waiting for me, but mostly I’m glad she isn’t here to bear the burden I’ve become.

 

I slept too much in the afternoon to sleep in bed, and I’d toss and turn if I could. Instead I stare at the patterns of light that seep round the pink swirled curtains and wonder about combat stress. I’ve had plenty of time for self-examination in here. There are things I need to work through from the fifteen years I was in the field. There’s only so far you can get on your own, though, and I’ve started to think I might go to counselling if they offered it to me, if I could discover words again. There’s every therapy you can imagine here, for those with functioning fingers, those with functioning mouths. Art therapy, garden therapy, and even I’m dragged into music therapy for all the good classical music does when I’d rather be listening to the Sex Pistols. I see the other guys heading off to see the psych, or going to group therapy, and before all this I’d have scoffed at the need to talk things out. Now, though …  
…and words tumble from my mouth, vicious cascade of green, angry torrent of red words, can’t stop them taking form, relentless wave swamping all before me, what I though was love has turned into rivers of blood consuming Kate, then Kerry, and I can see the flow advancing on Scott, and I can’t warn him, words no longer mine, just have to watch as he struggles against the flood, as he drowns in my angry red wave of unsaid words.

  
I’m awake.  
Heart pounds like it’s going to break out of my chest.  
Can’t clear the picture of Scott’s face as he drowns.  
It’s all my fault.  
Wish I hadn’t slept. Sweat pools in the small of my back, my hands are clenched and I can’t unfurl them.

The sky is a dark line in the gap in the curtains, but the corridor is always lit. They never close the doors in here, and someone walks up the corridor several times each hour, checking on who’s asleep, who’s awake. I hear light footsteps and I close my eyes, don’t want to have to fend off concern and sleeping tablets. If I don’t sleep it’s not like there’s anything important to do tomorrow. I’m musing on whether film night is Friday night when I realise the footsteps have stopped, stayed stopped, and there’s someone in the doorway, lingering for far longer than they should. I chew over whether to open my eyes, announce that I’m here, or assume that they’re no threat and will soon move on. I raise my lids the slightest fraction, but the corridor light means the body in the doorway is only a broad-shouldered male silhouette. Firmer steps echo down the hall, and the person watching me moves off. I’m caught, eyes open, by the night nurse who fusses round, rolls me to a different position, and in all of that I’m trying to inhale and work out whether I smelled cigarette smoke again or if the brain injury is making me hallucinate.

  
I doze off sometime in the small hours, sleep wake, jerk alert. If I sleep, the nightmares will come back, and the dreams where I can walk and talk that leave me bereft on waking. If Scott’s hand on my shoulder was a dream I should sleep, should dream again and hope he returns. Do dreams come with all the senses? There are images, for sure, bright, fast moving more real than reality itself. And sounds? I can’t remember whether the sound of a gunshot is the same in a dream as in real life. And if my dreams have smells, would the way Scott smells come through so clearly? And touch. Most dreams don’t leave impressions on my skin, the heat of someone else’s hand. And if it’s not a dream… It’s all too much. I have no solutions and eventually I sleep again.

 

“You had a bad night?” She’s perky this morning, perky every morning. “Should I get the doctor?”

  
I struggle to get my lids open. I had been sunk in deep, dreamless sleep. I don’t want the doctor, so I force myself awake, let her carry out the morning humiliation. It’s porridge, no scent of bacon so not the weekend yet, and film night can’t be Fridays.

  
I think they’ve upped my meds again because it’s impossible to keep my lids open and all I can do is sleep. I doze through the noisy chatter in the day room, don’t know if I ate at all, because I wake in the games room, the taste of fish in my mouth. A rowdy game of table tennis is taking place and I have no idea how I got there. The tea trolley comes round soon enough. I drain the plastic beaker that’s lifted to my mouth, even though it is stewed. Then one of the nurses comes round with the meds, and I close my mouth, try to turn away. It doesn’t make any difference and she opens my jaws, inserts the tablets, gives me a drink. I attempt to hold the pills in my mouth, but they grow soft and bitter. I can’t swallow them, cough, then choke, and someone calls the nurse, then there’s a doctor and I’m still choking on tiny flakes of powder, and by the time I’m breathing again, I’m exhausted. They force more medicine down me and all I want to do is sleep again.

  
I wake in the garden, dappled sunshine dancing between new green leaves. I pass some time trying to flex my toes. I’ve got my eyes half closed, right arm curled up against my chest, the way it always wants to stay, my left arm dropping loosely over the edge of the chair. I can smell new green grass while I watch the cherry blossom fall. Somewhere in the distance I can hear a ball thudding against a wall, and my leg twitches, remembering childhood football games.

  
A flight of sparrows starts up from one of the nearby bushes, then there’s a shadow, then a man tugging my chair back into the shrubbery. He’s all in black, baseball cap pulled down low, and even as my blood pounds in my ears, I know that I’m not ready for this.

  
Hidden by bushes he’s bolder, faces me so I can see his eyes as he leans in, and I’m dragged back into an alley in London, same pair of eyes, fighting for my life. He’s got an easier job this time: he pushes his hand over my face. It’s cold, dark in the shadows and I’m alone, except for his roughskinned hands, pushing down on my face, pushing me deeper and deeper, fingers tight on my nose, my mouth, can’t free myself, can’t drag oxygen in, and my lungs burn for the want of it, burn until all I am is pain and desire for air.

  
I open my mouth, do the one thing I can, and bite.

  
“YOU BASTARD!” he says, and I hope for someone to hear him. All I’ve gained is a temporary reprieve because I can’t move the chair.

  
“I’m fucking going to finish you this time,” the guy says, all control gone. It’s easy work for him to pick up a cloth, cover my face again. I struggle against him but it’s futile, and he pushes harder and my chest is burning, my heart rate through the roof and I’m seeing stars round the edge of my vision. Everything starts to go black, and all I can do is go limp in his hold.

  
I lie there, pressure on my face, sweat seeping through my shirt. I don’t know how long I can hold out for, how long before my faked unconsciousness becomes real, but I don’t have to find out because the pressure jerks off my face, the guy cries out, then hits the ground with a thud. As I open my eyes, there, leaning over me, frowning concern in his face, is Scott.

  
He’s ragged, bearded, and as I gasp in breath after breath all I can smell is the stench of stale whisky. There’s so much I want to say, but none of it matters because he’s alive and I’m alive. He rubs my cheek, brushes down hair, straightens my shirt, then sticks a cautious head out from the shrubbery.  
“I’m sorry, Mikey,” he says, then he pushes me back out there. He’s gone in seconds and I can’t find the strength to move my head to see him go. There is rustling in the bushes for a moment, he must be doing something with the guy’s body, then nothing.

  
The silence is broken by the squawking call of the magpie. It flies across in front of me, lands in a flutter of black and white, then preens itself on the lawn for a few moments. There’s movement in the trees, and before I’ve even tried to shift my gaze, a second streak of black and white descends, a second magpie lands on the lawn beside the first.  
 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months earlier

“He isn’t usually late,” Scott said, kneeling down so he had a better view of the motorbike engine. It wasn’t like there was actually a problem with it, but it gave them a reason to have stopped on this roadside in the middle of fucking nowhere.  
“Maybe he thought he was being tailed, took time to circle round a bit?”  
“Maybe.” Scott scowled at the engine, but he couldn’t have said what he was looking at.  
Finn sat on his haunches at the side of the road. Twenty minutes later Scott threw the spanner onto the dirt and stood up. Giving up all pretence of fixing the bike he started to pace, five steps up the road, five steps down, searching the horizon as he walked.  
“It’s getting dark,” Finn said, after a while. “How about I set up camp for the night?”  
Scott grunted, and Finn took that as assent. He started rummaging in his backpack, bringing out a small stove and pan first.  
“Betcha he’ll be here as soon as the kettle is boiling.”  
“Sure he will,” Scott said, but his smile was less than convincing.

Three days later they were still there. They’d moved back off the roadside, but it was flat enough they could see anyone coming from miles off.  
“We’re gonna have to go into town, Damien,” Finn said as he emptied the last water bottle. “Even if we come right back we need to stock up.”  
Scott fumbled for his phone. No calls. Stonebridge would have phoned if he could.  
Finn stopped fiddling with the stove for a moment and looked right at him. “All the time we’ve been here, part of you has been somewhere else.”  
“Huh?”  
“Go and find him.”  
“I’m sorry, Finn. We should head to Vegas like I promised.” Scott forced a grin but his gaze was still focussed down the road as far as he could see.  
Finn shook his head. “It’s not like him not to make the RV.”  
“Maybe he’s decided we’re better off on our own.” Scott adjusted his sunglasses against the glare of the setting sun.  
“Go find him, Dad. Vegas can wait.”

Stonebridge had never made the flight. Scott was hunched over the computer, empty beer bottles piled up beside him. Hacked CCTV coverage showed Michael leaving the Ministry but he vanished in a blindspot less than a hundred yards away. Scott glowered as he checked the footage one more time. Mikey would have been on his guard. Only fucking Ridley and his team knew he was in the area. Only a pro could have make Mikey vanish like that.  
Scott put Finn on a plane, then took the first flight out. He passed through four more airports, changing passports at each one. He didn’t need a passport at all as he was dropped by a small boat on the North Wales coast, dawn just breaking over the rugged coast.

  
It became easier to get more information the closer he got to London. A John Doe had been checked into a central London hospital about the right time. Head injuries. Found in an alley. The description matched. Scott’s stomach churned. He shouldn’t have let Michael go in there alone. He wasn’t going to leave him without back up now, though. His plan was simple. Go in, check it was Mikey, get him out before Ridley could arrange for someone to have another go.

  
He hadn’t slept since fuck knows when, and the rhythm of the Underground lulled him, but the lights were too bright, the tube train stopped every few minutes and bodies jostled elbow to elbow. Scott gripped on to a yellow rail, pressed up between an inner wall and a woman whose curves and bulges were echoed in her bloated carrier bags. With his hat pulled down over his face, Scott ran through everything that could go wrong. Worst case scenario, Mikey could have already checked out. He needed to act fast, shouldn’t have waited so long with Finn. He let go of the rail and clenched his fists at the thought of losing Mikey, but the tube jerked to a halt again and he fell against the woman, got a faceful of crisp grey hair and a, “Mind out!”  
“Sorry, ma’am” emerged from his mouth by reflex, and he bit his lip, tried to work out which was his stop.

  
He walked from Waterloo, which seemed to be the closest. Buses sped along the road, coming to an abrupt halt when streams of tourists crossed the road, heading to the London Eye. Scott kept his head down, stayed on the quieter side of the road but still a hawker thrust a leaflet at him.  
“Tour of London by bus, guv?” he asked, but Scott just walked faster.

  
He hesitated at the vast roundabout. The hospital was just around here, he knew, but he’d rather navigate his way across the Sahara than wrangle with the fourteen road crossings, each with its own set of traffic lights, that it seemed to require. He went wrong three times, but made it to the far side where the hospital rose up in front of him, a looming tower block right on the Thames. Scott lit up as he glanced across the river and saw the Houses of Parliament. The hospital was just minutes from where Mikey was felled. Scott thought for a moment about how Mikey made it here, whether he stumbled in himself, or whether he lay in that alley for hours until someone found him. He stubbed his cigarette out viciously, angry at himself for wasting time when Mikey could be checking out right now. Somewhere deep inside, though, he was reluctant to enter and he didn’t know why.

  
He had found out which ward Michael was on from the hospital computer, but he hadn’t clocked that it was the critical care unit. He stood in the entrance to the chrome and glass unit, his half-made plan crumbling to pieces. Winter sun glinted in through the glass, highlighting Mikey’s body overwhelmed by equipment. There was a tube down his throat forcing air in and out, more tubes in his wrists and emerging from under the blankets. The machines around him bleeped and whirred.

  
Scott took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. Somewhere at the back of his mind he had imagined them on an unending road trip, no ties. Not this. The smell of disinfectant burnt at the back of his throat. Never fucking liked hospitals anyway. He glanced over at the nurse who was watching him. He’d been here long enough. Michael Stonebridge wasn’t going anywhere. Time to go and make another plan.

 

  
Scott walked, fast and furious, away from the hospital, away from the river, oblivious to traffic and irritated Londoners who had to give way. He walked until he couldn’t walk any more. Looking up he found himself in some smoke-dirt suburb, fried chicken shops jostling with twenty four hour stores. There was a pub on the corner, the Star and something since half the letters had fallen off. Scott opened the door, walked up to the bar and bought a bottle of beer. Minutes later, the beer was gone, but Stonebridge’s scarred skull was still all too clear in his mind.

  
“Bottle of whisky,” he said, barely glancing at the unshaven barman in a greasy black shirt.

  
“Which one?”

  
Fucking Brits and their bloody pretensions. Whisky is whisky, beer is beer, tea is … and he thought of Stonebridge’s disgust at some of the things they had been served up over the years masquerading as tea. The barman was picking his nails as he watched him, waiting for the answer.

  
“Whatever,” Scott spat out, and the man brought out a bottle, placing it on the counter just a little too loudly.

  
Scott knocked back the first glass then sat with his head down and stared at the scratched countertop. Planning required thought, and Scott was the first to admit that he was more of an ‘act first, think after’ kinda guy. And the image of Stonebridge, corpse-still, kept forcing its way in. Another glass, then another, until the wood panelled walls of the room started to blur. Shouldn’t be drinking, shouldn’t be sitting here, in the open, anyone could come up behind him like they did to Mikey. Scott poured another shot. Hard-edged bruises, purple, blue and green danced in his vision. The parts of Mikey’s skull not covered in gauze were criss-crossed with scabs and stitches. His knuckles had been scabbed, he’d gone down fighting.

  
The pub was filling up, he was elbow to elbow with drinkers at the bar. Scott pushed the bottle away. The whisky wasn’t doing its job, he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t plan, couldn’t get Mikey’s face out of his mind. He needed more distraction.

 

“I have to go to work,” she said, shoving at his shoulder so her long dark hair brushed against his skin. He could tell from the tone of her voice it wasn’t the first time she’d tried to wake him. “You need to get up.” And go. He got the subtext, which hit him along with the mother of all hangovers. Scott fought back nausea as he pulled on his pants. He didn’t remember going back to this mismatched little apartment, with its aging grey carpet, her clothes strewn across the floor the only splashes of colour. He remembered her scarlet lipstick, he thought, the way it matched her shoes, but he couldn’t think of her name.

  
“Come on, I’m gonna be late,” she said, bag in hand as she waited at the door, crimson nails against the chipped age-white paint. He stumbled down the concrete stairs, didn’t wait for her as she locked the door. The stench of stale urine in the stairwell nearly undid him. He burst out though the graffitied reinforced glass doors. Glancing around, he couldn’t see a way out of the concrete courtyard. Grey stone blocks and bollards ran alongside raised beds full of long grass and discarded cans, condoms and needles. Tower blocks rose up around him, and the sky glowered winter-grey.

  
“Shit,” he said, as he pulled his sunglasses on out of habit. “Fuck.” Lost in London, at least he assumed he was still in London, couldn’t remember much after meeting the girl in the pub, she seemed a laugh, then … He felt in his pockets. Wallet, phone still intact. Why was he here? Shit. It all came back in a tidal wave of self-recrimination. Mikey.

  
“Fuck,” he said, then he leaned over one of the concrete blocks and vomited.

 

Scott mainlined cheap black coffee in a greasy caff until he could face eating a fry-up. He sat there, watching red buses jostle and chug at the stop outside, while builders demolished flats much like the one he had just left. He finished his meal and threw a note on the table. Then Scott stepped outside and lit up. He could see the Star and whatever in the distance, could feel the pull of liquid oblivion. Like that had worked so well last night, he thought, huffing at his own stupidity. He pulled his jacket round him. Gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing we ever do, ran through his mind as he headed to the nearest tube station. London in winter was fucking grim, and he wasn’t doing Stonebridge any good being here.

  
He had cursed his way round London’s public transport system and it was too late to get a flight by the time he finally reached the airport. He checked into a motel and queued for his room amidst a mix of businessmen and fractious families on stopovers before early morning flights. The blond receptionist with strident eyebrows and cheeks slashed with blusher had checked him in and checked him out. She was lying in his bed now, but Scott couldn’t sleep. She was warm against him, far less daunting now her makeup had worn off, but her perfume caught at his throat, and everything about the cleansheeted beige blandness of the place irked him. Her phone buzzed intermittently, stream of social media updates packed with grinning emojis, but every time it did it jerked at his consciousness. He shouldn’t be here. His mouth tasted of last night’s Jack. The bottle was still on the table and he glanced over at it. He rolled out of bed, careful not to wake her. Just one mouthful, and then he could face the day.

  
A hen party passed him as he headed for Departures, useful camouflage as they swept him up in chatter and prosecco and glitter He shrugged on the Damien Scott who could walk into a bar and leave twenty minutes later with a woman wrapped around him. They were off to Amsterdam, he found out between giggles and dirty jokes. He kissed the bride, checked the departure board, wondered if he should go with them. He could go anywhere, with anyone. No-one was going to be looking for him with a group of thirteen tipsy chicks. The bride’s mother was smashed, her chubby blond mother-in-law to be was not yet drunk enough and frowned at him. Seconds later he was kissing the chief bridesmaid, though, or maybe she wasn’t the chief bridesmaid but she said she should be, because she organised this whole trip, and Tracey didn’t do anything. Scott glanced over at the bar which was just too far away. He stared at the clicking characters that marked each plane as it arrived and departed.

  
“So where are you flying to?” a brunette in four inch heels asked him.

  
“It’s a long story,” he said, but he couldn’t muster the energy to fabricate something. He glanced up at the ticking display board. The digits banged it home that he could have left on that plane, and that plane and that one, could have fled fifteen times in the hour he had been standing there.  
Scott stood up. “I’m going to get a ticket,” he said.

  
His movement stirred the women and they straggled over to passport control. Scott watched them go, with mild concern for the guy who had to check them through. He didn’t know what was about to hit him.

  
He could almost feel the level of noise drop as one by one they passed into the next lounge. He turned back to the airline desks. That one or that one or …eeeny, meeny, miney …He stopped. Stonebridge went to see Ridley so Scott could start a new life, and he should do just that. He should go back to the States, call Finn, pick up the road trip where he left off. There was nothing he could do for Mikey.

  
He glimpsed himself in a two-way mirror. He was tired, unshaven, drinking at a time when most people might have been considering breakfast.

  
“Get a fucking grip,” he said to himself, although judging from the way people turned and stared, he had said it out loud.

  
Dark uniformed movement in the corner of his gaze alerted him to the need to move. He had stayed in one place far too long, would have been picked up on a security camera sixty times over. Shit. He was off his game, and he knew it, making stupid mistakes that would make everything Michael had done pointless. He owed it to Mikey not to get picked up, owed him far more than that. Scott turned away from the airline desks and headed out of the airport. He wasn’t buying a ticket out, not today. He had something to do first.

 

Sir Charles Ridley’s house in the Surrey Downs was all that Scott had expected, with views across miles of rolling countryside. White stone pillars stood each side of the glossy black front door, drawing the eye up the three stories of architectural excellence. Rows of bare-branched oaks looked down on the extensive lawns. He’d already stumbled into the ha-ha, a ditch by another name, some stupid Brit way of keeping the livestock off the grass. He had to skirt round the edge of the grass for fear of leaving footprints in the frost, had to pad quietly along the sides of the gravelled paths, neatly raked by the gardener even in January. Scott had easily avoided a police patrol parked at the bottom of the drive. He skirted out of range of a security light, and glowered at the arrogant lack of better defences. Ridley must be sure that he had left no-one alive who could threaten him.

  
He ran forward, low against the side of the house, then levered open one of the vintage sash windows. He clambered through, landing on deep pile carpet in some sort of drawing room, all glass cabinets and polished dark wood that glistened in the moonlight. Scott hurried out into the hallway. He listened for a second, but there were no alarms, no dogs, nothing. The house was silent, so Scott carried on up the stairs. He paused on the landing, checked his pockets, could feel his gun in its holster. This wasn’t a gun job, he hoped. It was more personal than that.

  
He pushed open the solid wood door that led into the master bedroom. He stood for a moment, listening to the soft murmur of Lady Ridley’s breath, the deeper snores coming from Ridley himself as they lay in the vast bed. Crisp white linen covered them. Scott counted the seconds in his head as he imagined the white turning red. He inhaled slowly. He should have been in and out already. He could feel the hipflask pressing against his side, and the temptation to take a swig almost overwhelmed him. Not now, he could celebrate when the job was done.

  
He felt in his pocket and pulled out his knife. He fingered it in his hand, blade open and ready. He could see Ridley’s smug smiling face and fleshy neck, moonlit through a gap in the curtains, just begging for the cut and slash. Scott swallowed.

  
He had done this before, too many times. He had never frozen on a job. But Mikey’s voice rangout in his mind: “You’re better than that, mate. Get out! Be a dad to Finn.”

  
A little huff of frustration escaped from Scott’s mouth, and Ridley shifted in his sleep. Scott adjusted his hold on the knife and plunged it deep into the heart of Ridley’s dress suit, lying sprawled on a chair in the corner of the room. He turned on his heel and left as noiselessly as he had entered. A warning would have to do.

 

  
He approached the hospital from a different direction this time, walking down the Thames from Vauxhall alongside run-down office buildings and up-and-coming executive flats. The river was almost at a standstill, he noticed, the tide must be just on the turn. He’d never thought that the Thames could be tidal this far up. He kept to the shadows, he needed to work on the basis that Ridley knew he was alive, was out there hunting him. A fire engine wailed as it exited the firehouse and took off down the road, a red and gold glow in the fading light. Going back was a risk he was going to have to take, he decided, quizzing himself again on what it was that had held him back from doing Ridley in. He’d killed … he hesitated over the exact number … he’d killed enough people to do it without flinching, but maybe that was it. Maybe he’d killed enough.

  
It was dark as he approached the hospital from the river side. He didn’t go in the front this time, instead scrabbling up the wall that separated the hospital grounds from the Thames path. He landed heavily on the other side, panting. For a second he thought about giving up the fags, the booze, but he shelved that and searched for the rear entrance.

  
It was easy enough to snag a set of scrubs from the laundry, easy enough to stroll through locker rooms and wards until he had acquired a name badge and a security pass. Occasionally a night-shifter glanced at Scott, but he kept his head down, intent on someone’s notes that he had swiped. He passed through bright lit corridors and curtained wards, glancing for a second at a nurse asleep with her head on the desk. He didn’t stop for more than a few seconds in critical care, made sure his face was away from the cameras as he checked on Stonebridge. Still there, still unconscious, still … Scott walked away slowly, one foot after another. The steady beep echoing from the bed reassured him that Mikey was still alive, but not much more.

  
He found a job, using a fake ID, pretending to speak little English. No better cover than a genuine reason to be there, he thought as he pushed the cleaner’s trolley through the night-quiet wards, emptying non-surgical waste, collecting and replacing sharps bins that seemed to be always full. He had shuddered as he walked through the wards the first few nights, kept his eyes averted from the sleeping patients, their stillness too close to death. Every night as he headed towards critical care he wanted to be there sooner, until the moment he actually saw Mikey and his breath came faster and he couldn’t wait to get away, to feel in his pocket for his flask and take a nip.

  
Scott couldn’t bear to look at Stonebridge, but he couldn’t stay away either. Couldn’t leave Mikey on his own. Shouldn’t have left Mikey to face Ridley alone. Small hours of the morning, Scott would glance around, desert his cleaning trolley for a moment, pause by Mikey’s bed. And if no-one was looking, he would brush his hand against Mikey’s, just for a second. He wasn’t alone, he wasn’t.

  
He could do the cleaning job in his sleep, could do it drunk, could do it stoned. Drunk helped when he had to scoop used paper towels up from the bathroom floor where they had overflowed the bins again. Stoned probably wasn’t sensible when his shift included mopping blood-stained vomit from just another Friday night in the ER. But no-one asked more of him than physical labour, and he didn’t ask anything other than to be there and see Stonebridge find himself again. Mikey was still in there somewhere, Scott thought. He had to be, just waiting until his body had recovered.

  
With two days off ahead of him, Scott had got smashed, picked a fight, then turned down the advances of a skinny girl in a scruffy ill-lit bar down in Brixton near his bedsit. He couldn’t find the energy these days, spent the rest of his weekend sleeping it off. It was all that he could do to drag himself out of bed in time for his shift. He staggered into work and made his usual slow progress through the wards, unnoticed, unnoticing, leaving critical care until last. He glanced over at Stonebridge’s bed then paused.

  
He rested, hand on the doorway to the ward, because something was different. There was a glint, a reflection that hadn’t been there before. Mikey’s eyes were open.

  
Scott stopped, left the trolley, glanced around and went over to the bedside.

  
“Hey Mikey.”

  
All he got was a glazed stare. A patient shifted in a bed across the ward, the machines continued their whirring respiration, but Mikey didn’t move his gaze.  
“Mikey?” He made sure he was in Stonebridge’s line of vision. Nothing. Not a flicker. “Mikey, you in there?” His voice was too loud in the silent ward. He squeezed Mikey’s hand in the hope of a response. His blue eyes were open, there was the occasional reflex blink but nothing more.  
Scott’s stomach churned, he could feel heat rising in his face as he fought down the urge to kick over the equipment that was keeping Stonebridge alive, that had saved his body but not his self.

Scott didn’t stop at Stonebridge’s bed in the CCU so often after that, couldn’t bear to see him lying still, gaze straight ahead, fed by tubes. Slowly things did change. They moved him to a different ward, and Scott felt his heart stop for a moment when he saw that empty bed. When he tracked Mikey down, they had taken some of the tubes out. If he walked past in the daytime sometimes Mikey was raised in the bed, but on the days Scott paused by his bed in the middle of the night, even when Mikey’s eyes were open, he showed no signs that he could see anything, made no response when Scott touched his hand.

  
Scott developed a new routine, sitting on the top of the bus as it made slow progress up through Kennington, past the old gas works and the cricket ground. He would spill into work at the last possible moment, lingering by the door with a cigarette, then stubbing it out in a hurry. He would circuit the hospital, ward by ward, emptying bags of waste, collecting and replacing sharps bins, then taking it all down to the basement. In the morning he would eat his meal of the day in the subsidised canteen, then return to his room, and sit and smoke and work his way through a bottle of whisky without achieving the oblivion he sought. The only time anything permeated his bubble was when he got into a fight outside a pub. The first time, the second time he felt better at the end, like he’d released something he didn’t know he was holding in as he pounded into some guy’s face. The third time, though, a police car screeched to a halt and he had to scramble to safety down an alley and through back gardens, ending up skulking in amongst a heap of split garbage bags, old cat food tins and used diapers while he waited for the cops to give up the search. As he heard car doors slam and the siren kick off again then fade, Scott straightened up. He stretched his knuckles, felt the swelling on his cheek where the other guy had got lucky. There was something stuck to his shoe and he couldn’t bear to investigate what it was. Fucking sunk to a new low, he chided himself as he scraped his sole against a kerb and lit up. Anywhere else he would have fought he way out, cops or no cops, he’d have risked arrest with nothing to lose but, he took a deep breath, he needed to stay here. He could leave, he could, because Mikey wouldn’t know any different, wasn’t doing Mikey any fucking good, but yet he stayed. From then on he drank in his room and avoided the pubs. He’d sprawl on the unwashed sheets on the mattress on the floor. The empties mounted up beside him as a reggae beat from the barbershop below thrummed through the floor, mingling with the scents of dope and fried chicken.

  
It was coming up to the end of his shift one night as Scott walked slowly down the men’s ward, like someone exhausted by a week of cleaning at nights. There were three men gathered by Stonebridge’s bed. He kept walking, paused, swished the mop along the floor. He battled the urge to snap the mop handle, turn it into a weapon, because it was Ridley, smart suit, dark tie standing out against a white shirt, nodding gravely as a doctor spoke.

  
They started to move away from the bed, and Scott pushed his trolley onwards, head down. He hurried his steps once he reached the corner, anger melding with concern that he had come much too close to being clearly not dead in front of the one person who really mattered. Should have finished Ridley off when he had the chance. Should figure out a way to get Mikey out, in case Ridley was planning to try again, but he ditched that idea as soon as he thought it. Ridley’s hit man’s job was as good as done. Mikey wasn’t spilling any secrets about that final mission. Scott shoved his trolley aside, and walked out of the hospital. He lit a cigarette, pulled out his flask and took a slug, then walked a few yards on until he reached the edge of the Thames. He stood there, watching dawn rise, and only moved on when the whisky was gone.

 

The next day Stonebridge was moved. Scott broke into patient records and tracked him down to a rehab unit in a big country house, out on the moors somewhere called Yorkshire. He emptied out a stash he’d been keeping in a left luggage locker, purchased a battered old van for cash, and left London without a backwards glance. Scott drove up the M1. He took turning after turning, the drilling rain turned to sleet, and the roads grew narrow. The fields around him were filled with sheep and the occasional early lamb.

  
When he neared his destination, Scott parked up on a hillside where he could overlook the massive former stately home. The clouds hung low in the sky and the sleet had slowed to a drizzle. He wanted to see Stonebridge, to check he was all right, but it was a stupid risk to take when Mikey wouldn’t know if he did. The thought still nagged at him that he should have left the country, should have stuck to the plan they had made together. Or perhaps he should have killed Ridley who was obviously still keeping tabs on Mikey. Scott sighed as he slumped lower on the front seat. He picked at the split in the battered vinyl cover. Don’t look back, don’t return, and don’t stay in one place long enough to be found. He had been breaking all those rules since he got the job at the hospital, since he stood in the airport bar. If one of us doesn’t make it, they had agreed, the other one has to go on and live life for both. He had never thought it would come to that.

  
He scowled as he gazed across the fields where tiny seedlings made patches of green in amongst the thin layer of snow. Mikey should have died, they both should have, so many times over. What was the point of survival if it was to be in this strange half-life that infected them both? Scott twisted the top off a new bottle of whisky and glowered at the pair of black and white birds savaging some small corpse on the ground in front of the van. Mikey was trapped by his body, and Scott couldn’t escape, because every time he considered a route out of England something inside stopped him.

  
“Fuck!” he said. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel then took a gulp of whisky from the bottle. He couldn’t just sit and wait, not anymore. He pulled the gun out of his holdall. He could end this now, bullet through his head. Out here, no-one would hear the shot. But that would be betraying Mikey. The Michael Stonebridge he knew wouldn’t want to end his days in some sort of care home, immobile. Scott needed to think of a way out for both of them.


	3. Chapter 3

Some days Scott lies camouflaged on the hillside, binoculars in one hand, cigarette in the other, trying to catch sight of Stonebridge through the windows. As the weather improves, there are more afternoons where Michael is pushed outside in his wheelchair and parked in the garden for an hour. Scott focusses the binoculars on his face, tries to glimpse some sign that Stonebridge is aware of where he is.

Scott only sneaks into the mansion when he hasn’t seen Stonebridge all day, when he can’t bear not knowing. The building is silent at night, broken by quiet murmurs from the staff, and the occasional scream of a PTSD-fuelled nightmare. Scott doesn’t do this as often as he wants because staff are on duty all night through, and someone checks on Stonebridge every twenty minutes.

Scott waits for the night nurse to check on Stonebridge and move on, then slips in to stand, silent, next to the bed, watching Michael’s chest rise and fall until he hears footsteps echoing down the long corridor, the night nurse making their next round. He has become adept at vanishing into the cleaning cupboard, letting himself out of a small window and dropping, noiseless, to the ground.

It’s too risky, he thinks, as he starts to clamber back into the van, breathless from the race up the hill in the drizzle that started mid-afternoon and hasn’t stopped since. An owl hoots in the woods that hide the van from view. Scott shoves aside some of the scrabble of tins and wrappers and bottles, trying to clear a space for his sleeping bag. Should find a garbage bag, should clear the van out, should … He takes a swig from the bottle, winces as he clinks glass against tooth. He drains the bottle, like he always does after seeing Stonebridge. He peers into the darkness of the woods surrounding him. If he lies low, moves the van every day or two, relies on the remoteness of the location, then maybe he can get away with staying nearby.

He hacks into the computers remotely, reads Stonebridge’s notes again and again while cigarettes burn to ash in his fingers. Michael seems stable, likely to stay in the rehab unit for months to come. If Scott was hoping to read news of progress, the only thing he finds is ‘no change’.

Scott stops buying beer. It doesn’t hit the spot. He’s got a mental list of stores in the area, and he parks up a little distance away, walks in, hat down, buys a bottle of whisky, one of vodka, never the same place twice in a row, never the same time of day. Every time he enters a shop it reminds him he shouldn’t be here, can’t risk being picked up on CCTV, should go, can’t work out why he stays.

He gathers together micro-cameras, tiny microphones, packs his pants pockets with screwdriver, tape and glue. It was too close last time as he stood behind the door, praying to the sleepless god who protects soldiers that the nurse wouldn’t check inside the room. He can’t keep risking getting caught.

He wants to do this sober, stayed off the booze until night fell but his hand is shaking and his gut clenches, so he takes a drink, just to steady himself. He will set up the surveillance then, fuck it, he’ll leave. Camera over the bed, in the dining hall and rec room, in the physiotherapy suite. He will be able to check in on Mikey from anywhere in the world. The cramping pains came back so Scott raises the bottle to his lips again.

He finishes up in the garden, wiring cameras into the lamp posts that runs up the path, then staggers up the hillside to the van. Scott drains the bottle, hoping for oblivion as he lies on his sleeping bag. He could head off now, but maybe he’ll sleep first, maybe he will leave tomorrow.

Scott doesn’t leave the next morning, nor the next day, nor the next. He sits in the van, eyes fixed on the screen. He watches Mikey being dressed, being fed breakfast, he watches him sit passively while the physio moves his limbs, watches him in the dining room, seemingly half-conscious as someone shovels food in his mouth. He shouldn’t have set up the cameras, he thinks as he slugs back the end of the bottle, shouldn’t be watching, but he can’t tear himself away. Scott trades out whisky for coffee, then moved to coffee with whisky, not wanting to doze, to miss a moment of this awful reality TV show he has put on his own screen.

He watches Mikey being undressed. He’s seen Stonebridge get undressed before, stripping off blooded and muddied fatigues before falling into the shower at the end of a clusterfuck of a mission. He has watched Mikey fall asleep beside him, ‘Your watch, mate’ the last words on his lips before snatching a few hours sleep in the field. Nothing has prepared him for this, the least sexy strip he has ever seen, beamed in too much detail as every pixel shows how little Stonebridge can do for himself. A broad-shouldered male nurse fumbles his buttons, then flops Mikey forwards like a corpse before tugging his shirt off, pulling on his pyjama top. He pushes the fabric of the hoist underneath Stonebridge’s legs, twists the straps into place, then moves his head into a better position. Scott lifts the mug to his lips without taking his gaze away from the screen, gripped as the machine lifts Stonebridge inch by jerking inch. The coffee is bitter in his mouth as Michael is swung like a mailbag then deposited on the hospital bed. Scott coughs, chokes, blinks away the tears that break through uncalled for. Michael’s face isn’t blank like it usually is. He was grimacing at the movement. Scott drinks again. Mikey couldn’t be aware of this, could he? It’s gotta be killing him, bit by bit, if he is. Scott tips the whisky bottle to pour into the drags of the coffee, but it’s empty and he chucks it onto the floor. He glances around the van, can’t see another bottle, can’t see much in the gloom and mess. He rubs his eyes. Tomorrow he will clear up. Tomorrow he will think about what he has seen.

 

Scott scowls as he clambers up to the window with the broken lock. He can’t fucking leave the country. Cameras and microphones can’t reassure him: watching Mikey is making it worse, if anything. Scott had thought that Mikey didn’t know what was going on, at least until he watched his face as he was jerked about in the hoist. Now, though, he’s gotta make one last visit just to see if Mikey is still at home or if his body has been vacated. Will Mikey know if he touches him?

Scott stands next to the bed. Stonebridge’s pyjamas are askew, one shoulder exposed, and Scott rests his hand there. He swallows as he looks at Michael. His skin is soft and warm against Scott’s hand. He’d never thought of Michael as soft, but months of inactivity are wearing away at his muscles, eating at the man he used to be.

As he stands, Scott thinks about ways out of the UK. He should contact that guy with the boat, slip across into Ireland, then maybe find another boat this time, no matter where it’s heading. He could catch up with Finn, or maybe not, because he can’t explain all this to him. He looks down at Mikey, trying to tear himself away, when Mikey’s head jerks, eyes open. Scott pulls back, hasn’t seen Michael move that much in months, finds himself eye to eye with Stonebridge, shocked comprehension in his gaze.

There is a movement in the corridor. Scott stumbles back into the shadows. His twenty minutes is up. “Gotta go!” he mouths at Mikey, no way of telling if he has heard.

 

Scott dithers for another day. He stands smoking at the edge of the woods, looking down on the garden, watching Stonebridge, wondering. What would Michael say if he could speak? Would he be furious at Scott for being there at all? If his brain is working fully, he could have months of unsaid words pent up inside. But most of all, Scott thinks, if he was Mikey the one thing he’d want to say was that it was unbearable to be locked inside his body. He scowls at the lush green lawns in front of him. Someone comes to push Stonebridge back indoors, and Scott turns to walk back to the van.

That night he sneaks back into the unit, waits for the nurse to pass, then stands in the doorway to Stonebridge’s room. Mikey lies, death-still. Scott can’t cross the threshold, can’t decide what to do. He could walk over, wake him, look him in the eye and … what then? Mikey won’t be able to tell him what to do. His heart twists inside him, because maybe that’s what he has needed all along. He stands there until he can hear footsteps along the corridor. He has waited too long. He takes his usual route out, still undecided.

Back at the van he flings open the rear doors. A waft of stale air, fags and booze drifts out into the chill night air, and Scott steps back. He can’t do this, can’t be this person, can’t make this decision. He has relied on Stonebridge to be his moral compass for too long. A gust of wind blows a carrier bag up in a circle and down again. Scott stares at the detritus, chip wrappers, bottles. He should clear it up, he should, but there’s no point if … and he rummages for where he left half a bottle of whisky, sits down at the back of the van, and waits for dawn.

As soon as it is light enough for the shops to be open he drives into the nearest village, bumps the van up on a grass bank, and walks down to the small store that sells everything. He asks for whisky, vodka, cigarettes, nods at the guy behind the counter as he hands over the notes, then heads out. He drives on for a bit, into a new bit of woodland and parks up. He opens the whisky, places it on the ground beside him, then gets out his gun. He hasn’t used it for too long, he thinks as he meticulously takes it apart and cleans each piece. Too long, not long enough. Scott scowls as he puts it all back together. He can’t get this wrong.

He is parked about a mile out from the rehab unit. He sticks the vodka in the capacious pocket of the waterproof jacket he bought not long after realising Yorkshire rain drove horizontal into the gaps in his clothing. He looks at the van, considers setting fire to it, but that would only draw attention. It is parked well into the woods, he hasn’t seen any passers-by, hopefully it will go unnoticed for a while.

He thought about bringing Mikey up here to do it, but the wheelchair would struggle on the rough ground. He checks his pockets for cigarettes and lighter, shoves the gun in the back of his jeans. They are filthy, drink-stained, but that won’t matter. Get down there, get Mikey, get it done. He takes a slug from the vodka bottle, hadn’t meant to start it quite this soon, needs to steel himself for the task ahead. He’s not sure when he acquired this distaste for death.

Scott shoves the bottle back in his coat then sets off down the hill. He can see the rehab unit getting closer far too quickly. He wouldn’t have done this in daylight, not by choice, but it would be harder to get Mikey out at night, and he needs long enough to fire two shots, can’t risk a job half done. Scott’s steps slow as the gardens come into view. He is still five hundred yards away when he spots Mikey, slumped in the wheelchair, head awkwardly to one side, one hand clenched against his chest. There are songbirds chirping in the bushes, and cherry blossom scattered on the lawn.

 

Scott checks for the gun. He doesn’t have a choice, not really. He owes Finn an explanation though, and he feels for his phone. How he will find the words to tell him what he’s about to do, he doesn’t know. He wouldn’t want to go on living if he was Mikey, wouldn’t want to be parked in some English country garden every afternoon for the next fifty years while his body slowly decays. Everyone Mikey cared about is gone. This is the only thing to do. He pats the bottle in his pocket. He could take another mouthful, but maybe he’ll save that until he is closer. He needs to pull him into the shrubbery, look him in the eye and make sure that this is really what Michael Stonebridge wants.

He stands on the hillside, looked down the gardens, then starts to type.

_I’m sorry, Finn. If you’d seen him, you’d understand. You know I love you._

He hesitates for a second before typing Damien, then deletes it and replacing it with Dad.

Scott is about to click send when a movement catches his eye. Someone is with Stonebridge, a man in black, tugging his wheelchair into the bushes just like Scott planned to do. Scott’s feet are moving before he realises, pounding down the hill. The man is bent over Mikey, and as Scott approaches at speed the man pulls away with a cry. His face is red as he looks at his hand for a second. He grabs a rag from his pocket and leans in again, hand pressed against Mikey’s face. Stonebridge grows limp beneath him. The instinct that has kept the two of them alive for years propels Scott forwards.

He pulls the man off Mikey, punches him so hard that his knuckles crack against his jawbone. He watches the man fall to the floor, unconscious. He picks up the hit man’s hand and sees the bite mark, then turns to Stonebridge. Mikey is red-faced, gasping for air, but when Scott looks into his eyes he is fully alert. Mikey is in there, looking right back at him with intent and focus. Scott flounders in the intensity of that gaze for a moment, then straightens up. The gun in his waistband presses against his back, a reminder of how close he has come to making a fatal mistake. Michael bit the man. He wants to live.

Scott raises a hand to Mikey’s cheek, rubs off a smear of dirt. He has to work out what to do, and he thinks about dragging Mikey out of there, pushing the chair up to the van, but then what? He can’t look after him in the van, he has to sort out Ridley’s merc, make sure he doesn’t live to have another go.

Mikey’s hair is longer than it used to be, and ruffled by the brawl. Scott brushes it back into place, then tries to straighten his shirt. He glanced onto the lawn. No-one is looking their way, the whole struggle has gone unnoticed. Scott takes a deep breath then grips the wheelchair handles.

“I’m sorry, Mikey,” he says, then pushes the chair out onto the lawn. His gut clenches as he walks away, knowing Mikey can’t come after him. He stands in the shrubbery, panting. Leaving Mikey behind is like a kick in the balls, but he can’t … the impossibility of providing the care Mikey needs drowns him. He reaches for the bottle in his pocket, raises it to his lips, but the man on the ground makes a movement. He applies a boot to the guy’s head, then bends to tie up his wrists. As he drags the body through the bushes Scott frowns. He has been bouncing from one thwarted half-baked plan to another. He can’t risk things falling apart again. He needs a proper plan, one he can see through to the end.


	4. Chapter 4

I’m awake all evening, the meds can’t quash what has just happened. I can feel the pressure on my mouth, my chest and throat still burn. But over that is the touch of Damien’s fingertips on my cheek, his hand smoothing my hair back into place. He is alive, and he’s here. He looked ragged, shadows under his eyes. He’s thinner, bearded, and my hand twitches at the thought of touching his face again. His shirt looked slept in, like it always does, but he never used to stink like he hadn’t washed for weeks. The stench of whisky that surrounded him was deeper, staler than his usual one-night bender.

Now, I know the real Scott is out there and I’m not scenting ghosts.

It’s fully dark now, and I’ve lost track of how many times the nurse has passed. What if Scott reappears tonight, what if he’s waiting for the quietest part of the night, like that man who stood in the doorway and watched me? Maybe that was Scott, and I wasn’t hallucinating his tobacco. Maybe the dream of his touch on my shoulder was real.

But he’s seen me now.

It doesn’t matter whether he was here before or whether it was chance that he came by in time to save me. He’s seen the marionette I’ve become, incapable of movement without someone else to pull the strings. He has seen me, stripped of everything I was, everything that made us partners. My gut clenches, bile rises and I swallow the bitter taste back down.

I thought I’d let Scott down, let him die. But all this time he’s been out there. Choosing not to be with me.

He could have stayed another moment. He could have looked me in the eye a little longer. But he couldn’t bear to be with me, and I don’t know why he bothered, wish he’d let him finish the job.

Fuck.

It’s worse when I thought I’d failed him, worse than when I thought he had died.

I didn’t know I held out any hope. I thought I was resigned to being here until death released me, but when death came, I fought. That second where his hand brushed my cheek, I thought maybe he would get me out of here.

Stupid, groundless hope. What could Scott do? Where could he take me? I can’t live on the run, can’t slip across borders anymore. We’re never going to finish that road trip through the States.

So why did it hurt so much when he said, “Sorry, Mikey,” and why did his departure feel like a betrayal?

 

I sleep, wake, it’s still dark, and I can still taste treachery. In the shock of seeing Scott I hadn’t focussed on the key fact: someone tried to suffocate me.

My heart beats hard like it’s happening again, can’t think how I escaped this time. Pure dumb luck that Scott was there. Someone wants me dead, though. They’ll try again and I can’t rely on luck.

I try to slow my breath and speed my brain because my thoughts are all I have for defence. Out of all the people who might want me dead, it’s most likely Ridley that’s behind this. He thinks I’m the only person alive who can testify that he tried to have us killed. He made sure that Locke didn’t live to tell his tale. A flash of memory returns, I’m standing in his office. ‘I will kill you’, I say, then turn and leave. I left Ridley with Scott’s tags, Locke’s and Richmond’s too. And in a stomach churning jolt, the plan comes back to me too. I was supposed to persuade Ridley that Scott was dead, so he could live unhunted. Shit. Fuck. Did I do that part right? Shit. Scott was supposed to have a new identity. Scott was supposed to be far, far from here. Shit.

How could I forget all this?

Scott isn’t dead, isn’t living his new life. He’s here. It can’t have been luck, nor coincidence. Scott must be nearby, watching out for me. There’s warmth in my veins, because so many things make sense, and now I know he’s near I can look out for him, wait for the scent of tobacco, hope to see him again. But if he’s near he’s at risk. If he’s to survive to be Finn’s father, he can’t stay here. I need to drive him off. I have to persuade him that he needs to go and be a father to Finn, but I don’t have the words. Maybe if I let another of Ridley’s assassins succeed Scott will leave, but I can’t rely on suicide by hit man. If Scott is going to go and get on with his life, I need to resolve this myself.

 

I don’t think I slept again after that, my mind too full of plans, so I’m tired and yawning in physio. She wants me to pick up blocks, and transfer them from one small box to another, against a timer. It’s a futile exercise, but the woman’s so encouraging that she almost makes me believe that this is real, useful progress, and one day I’ll get out of this damn chair and get my life back.

 “Shall we try the right hand first?”

I let my eyelids fall, because I didn’t pick up any blocks last time and can’t see that’s going to be any different today. She won’t let up though, her hand on mine as she unfurls the fingers on my duff right hand, lets them curl round the block, lifts my arm.

“Can you release the block now, Michael? Just a little bit of movement should do it. Look! There is goes.” And I open my eyes and the block is in the box, below my hand, but all it can have done is fallen. She’s trying again, and I’m watching now. Getting the block into my frozen fingers is like operating a digger, but I can hold the block. She moves my hand across again and waits.

“Come on, Michael, you did it before.”

Chance, that’s all it was, I think, but maybe there are second chances and I try it like she’s told me so many times. I imagine my fingers opening, send vibrating red waves down the dormant nerve fibres, willing the signal to reach the muscles. I can’t help but jerk away when it does, flinching as the block clicks in the box.

“Brilliant! One more?”

We make it to five, but on block number six my fingers clench and spasm, and there’s no way that they will open, let alone release anything. Pain shoots up my arm, and I can’t work out how I have so little sensation in that limb, but the hurt can still take my breath away.

The pain doesn’t stop all the time we’re working on the other arm. I make it to seventeen blocks before I can’t move any more and she’s apologetic, says maybe we’ve done enough for today. Perhaps she can see the discomfort in my face, because she goes to talk to the doctor. Through the spikes and spasms, I have a moment of clarity. Maybe this is one exercise that does have a purpose. I try to flex my fingers, ease the cramping, but the doctor comes over and I end up with a double dose of muscle relaxant that leaves me woozy and dozing all afternoon. It’s all much clearer, even through the meds. Scott is somewhere nearby, warm glow that I’m not alone for now. And more importantly, I have a plan.

 

It’s bright daylight outside when I wake the next day. The magpies are chattering, my muscles ache and my mouth feels like there’s an old sock in it. I guess that I’m due another dose of whatever they’re giving me, but the drug round hasn’t started yet.

She washes me, dresses me, then calls for the orderly to help with the final stages and get me into the hoist. Then it’s into the chair, meds and breakfast. I have to take the tablets, have to let her put them in my mouth.

“Had a bit of a problem with the tablets the other day, did you?” she asks, while she holds the water to my mouth. I swallow, tablets still in my cheek. “That’s better, get it all down.” It seems like a lifetime since yesterday afternoon.

There’s a moment where she goes to get the porridge, and I push out all I’ve been given, feel them dribble down my face. I can’t stay doped until someone comes to kill me, my heart beats faster at the thought. I swipe at my face with my left hand, grip the tablets, then force them into my right. I’m lying back, exhausted by this little effort when she returns with the porridge.

“Cheer up, love. It may never happen.” She holds out the bowl and spoon. “Now, are you going to have a try or do you want me to do it?” It isn’t a question that she really wants an answer to, but I will my left hand forwards towards the tray.

“Rightio. You’re going to do it.” She slides the spoon into my hand. I can do this, I can. I raise the spoon to my mouth, it feels like lifting a dead man, but I get it there, open, force my lips to close a little until a trace of porridge is in my mouth.

“That’s it!” She’s genuinely pleased, and I let my arm fall back, I catch the bowl and it flips right over.

“Oh no, never mind, love. Let me just get something to wipe it up. Now, here’s some tea, you have a sip, then I’ll get you a new bowl of porridge.”

 

It is easier to snare the tablets at lunchtime, because it’s busy, everyone passing through the same dining hall, never quite enough staff, so no-one focusses on following up the drug round. I can keep the tablets in my clawed hand while faking swallowing. It’s a sunny afternoon too, so I’m put in the garden. I don’t want to be left in the usual place, but it’s the one place I’m on my own, and all I need to be left for long enough that I can find somewhere for a cache. 

It’s amazing what the meds must have been doing. My mind is clearer than it’s been in days, weeks, months, but I can’t let them see anything is different, so as the woman goes to walk back down the path I let my lids fall, force relaxation. Inside, though, my heart ricochets in my chest.

It takes a while but sitting there I work at the arm rest. Little by little I lever up the plastic cover, and there’s enough space to slip the pills inside. This is more action that I’ve seen in months. My fingers are trembling by the time I finish, and I keep glancing round, wondering if I’m being watched, wondering if Scott is near.

 

##

Can’t fucking sleep, can’t fucking sit still, can’t fucking work out a way forward.

Stonebridge would know what to do.

Scott grits his teeth, looks about for a bottle, then swears as he remembers he tipped both the whisky and vodka onto the soil. He’s cleared out the van too, taken all the garbage to a tip. The clear space isn’t helping clear his mind, though.

He is parked up on the hillside, has been pacing round the van, glancing down at the gardens to watch out for Mikey. Inside the van is too small, too cramped, too dark, and he knows that it smells, that he hasn’t washed for weeks. It hasn’t seemed important and he’s not sure why it is now.

Plan, plan, make a fucking plan. He could go down there, push Mikey back to the van, drive to the coast, but could he get Mikey onto a boat? They could find a plane, but he’d need ID for Mikey, and it would be hard to disguise him now, and would Ridley have someone watching the airports? They could find somewhere nearby to hole up, but then he’d have to work out how to look after Mikey and might Ridley track them down and …?

Scott’s skin is itching, his gut is cramping and when he goes to check on the cameras, his hand is shaking so much he can barely hold the screen

He can do this. He’s got to do this. Scott plunges a fist into the side of the van.

“Fuck!”

##

It’s bloody great, bloody ironic. I’ve stopped taking the bloody pills and they’re mounting up in a cavity in the arm of the wheelchair. Five every morning, four at lunch and seven each evening. And why is it so bloody ironic? Because now I’m skipping the meds I can stay awake all morning. I can think whole thoughts before they drift away. Head injury, they said, and I can feel the scars on my skull, now I can raise my left hand to my head, but my immobility and wool-headedness has been down to the bloody drugs all this time. My right arm is still fucked, but the left is getting so much better, and without the drugs I can move my legs more, and if they ever leave me alone I might try to stand. I can’t risk the staff knowing what’s going on, because I’m not ready yet. I’m not risking this going wrong. I need a week’s worth of tablets, I think, to make sure. And I have to find some way to do it so I can’t be found too quickly, so they can’t bring me back.

I’m awake: I’ve slept enough in the last few months. And I’m awake, I’ve got to admit, because I’m waiting for Scott to come back. I lie still as I can, eyes closed, faking sleep, but I’m wired like we’re on an op. Maybe it’s coming off the pills, maybe it’s because for the first time in ages I can think, I can plan. I can’t stop thinking. I try. I lie there and tense then relax each muscle set in turn, breathe deep and slow, try to find a place of calm, but my thoughts loop in circles. They were doping me up to keep me here. Who’s idea was that? Ridley’s? Ridley tried to have me killed. He might try again. Scott saved me. He’s nearby. Scott’s at risk of discovery. He needs to flee. Ridley might have me killed soon, but maybe it’s not soon enough. Ridley might hear that Scott’s still alive. I must save Damien Scott, must make him leave.

 

“You look tired this morning, Michael.”

The speech therapist is young with long blond hair, and she makes me think of Kerry. She’s persisted with me since I’ve been here, all to no avail and there’s no reason to expect anything different today.

 I can’t stop yawning and she giggles. “That’s a new exercise,” she says, “now let’s make a start.” She has me rolling my tongue, touching it to the roof of my mouth, my teeth, open mouthed and closed.

“How about some sounds?” she asks, and we run though the usual futile exercises where she makes sounds at me, and I repeat in soundless mimicry. We’re nearly at the end when an ‘aahh’ comes out. She’s pleased, I’m shocked. and I have to try again, but I can’t manage any other sounds beyond a frustrated ‘hhh’.

She seems to know I have something to say, and even though the next guy is waiting in the corridor, she pulls out a sheaf of picture cards. I want to say, ‘Finally’, but that’s not on the cards. I haven’t been able to move enough before nor sustain a thought, but now I can point at what I want to say. I don’t want to say ‘food’ or ‘drink’ or ‘sleep’ and these cards look like they are designed for toddlers. I’m trying so hard and my arm spasms and shoots all the cards to the floor.  I release air I didn’t know I was holding, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe.

“It’s okay, Michael. It will take time.” She’s laying out individual cards with an emotion on each and I flick at ‘angry’ and ‘sad’ and ‘frustrated’ and ‘afraid’ and there are tears running down my face and I can’t think of the last time I cried.

“Do you want a break?” she asks, and I shake my head. It’s too much, too hard because my movements are still jerky, but I can’t stop now someone is listening to me.

“It’s fine, take your time. Look, I’m going to get you a drink, just take slow breaths if you can.”

She’s talking to someone in the corridor and I hold my breath in, try to hear if she’s getting the doctor, because if they medicate me there’s no chance of me focussing on getting any message across, but all she’s doing is sending the guy in the hall for lunch, telling him she’ll see him later.

She comes back in, water in a beaker which she holds to my lips. I swallow, small sips because she’s watching and that’s how she’s said to do it. When my breathing steadies she gets out a different card, three choices, then four sub-choices for each option. Rapidly I jab at ‘I need something’.

She looks at me, really looks for the first time like I’m more than a set of muscles that don’t work. “I’m sorry, Michael,” she says, and I think she’s giving up on me, but she says, “I should have tried this sooner. You must have a lot to say.”

She turns away. Something is simmering inside me, because she’s right, I’ve got months of words building up like lava in a volcano. Scott was always the one who vented but right now I could blow.

“What about this? If it’s too hard, just push it away and we’ll go back to the pictures.”

This is more like it, a big board of words. I scan it for a moment, manage to punch at ‘I’ and ‘want’, but I can’t get any further. I smack my hand on the board once, twice, three times, then let my arm fall. I’m shaking with the effort, can’t keep going, must keep on.

She flutters through more boards until she finds one packed with verbs. She pauses, then says, “I wonder if you can do this on the iPad.” She leaves again, and I can’t work out what I need to say, if she finds a way for me to say it. ‘Sir Charles Ridley is trying to kill me.’ She would write that off as brain damaged delusions. I could ask her to try to contact Scott, but as soon as anyone starts asking about him Ridley will know I lied in his office that day. Maybe he already suspects Scott’s not dead. If the hired gun made it back to him, if he told him what happened he could be working it out right now. But Scott would have seen to that. At least, the Scott I knew would have, but maybe Scott isn’t the same. He looked older, worse that he’d ever been after an op gone wrong and an all-night bender.

I think about the pills in the arm rest, and wonder how many will be enough, and how Scott will know what I’ve done, and how they will know not to bring me back.

She returns with the iPad, and I know what I’m going to say.

It takes a while for her to find a position that works for me.

It takes even longer for her to explain the seemingly simple layout.

It takes me a while to tap out the first words

“I … want … a … do … not…”

She frowns, puzzled, but I know what I’d doing.

It’s slower still as I have to find the letters one by one.

The electronic voice spits them out staccato: “r…e…s…u…s…c…i…t…a…t…e   o…r…d…e…r.”

I slump back in the chair. It’s done.

 

It takes everything I have to conceal the tablets at lunchtime. I’m shaking and fumble the pills, but the staff are too busy to notice. One of the guys on my table does, though, picks them up off the floor, pushes them back in my hand.

Thanks, mate, I want to say as he makes eye contact. There are some good people in here, men like me who never expected to end up like this. It’s not worth trying to make friends, though, not without words, not now.

They take me into the garden like they always do now on sunny days, but the carer who pushes me up there has a worried frown on her face. I flick my eyes for her to stop much closer to the house than usual. I don’t need to be surprised by death, not when I have it in my grasp. Three more days or maybe four …

She looks at me face on, her arms crossed. “It’s not that bad, is it, Michael?” she asks. She sighs. “Maybe it is.”

The speech therapist has obviously spread the news of my request. I want the iPad back, want to justify my choice, or maybe I don’t because there’s nothing to explain. I don’t want to hurt the people who have cared for me these past few months, but when it comes down to it, it is my body, it is my choice. And really, it’s no choice at all if it’s Scott’s life or mine. He has Finn, and he has a body that could function for another forty years. Hell, he could see his grandchildren. I know that what happened to me shortened my odds of a long life, and I wouldn’t want one now. Maybe I never did. Maybe that’s why everything went to hell with Kerry and I: I didn’t want it enough. Why would I join up in the first place if I wasn’t ready to die for my country, to die before I found old age.

##

Scott sits in the library in the nearest city. He’s got his coat on, collar up, cap pulled down, but he doesn’t stand out because spring in Yorkshire is like fucking winter some days. He has been logged in for twenty minutes, taking more care with what he’s typing than he has done in a while. He glances at the time again. He can’t stay here much longer, just in case, but he’s nearly done.

It took all night to come up with the plan. He could find much of what he wanted on his phone, made scrawled notes about much more, but for this it’s safer to use an anonymous account on an anonymous computer, and for a moment he rues the demise of internet cafes as he types the last few words and clicks send. He glances around, then leaves, keeping his head down as he passes the security cameras that fill every town centre.

He waits, parked up outside the city, returns the next day.

The library is almost empty as he hunkers down and logs on. The internet is too fucking slow, but the message is there, his contact has come through.

_“I need proof. Get me that and I’ll do the rest.”_

Scott fights back the urge to punch the air. He’s got a bite. Now he needs to reel him in. He types furiously, names, places, grid references, dates. He hesitates for a second before his last sentence.

 _“They will have moved the body, but you’ll find evidence of where we crashed the helicopter anyway, they couldn’t hide that.”_ He types in one more grid reference, thanks his good memory, and logs off.

He’s got one more job to do. It’s easy to find a pawn shop here, though it’s got a fancy new name.

“I need a digital camera,” he says to the guy. “Got anything with a long lens? And some sort of voice recorder.”

He could buy something new, but he wants to pay cash, no questions asked. The guy disappears out the back and returns with a few cameras in a tray.

“Have a look, mate,” he says. Scott rummages and clicks until he finds something that will fit his purpose. He shoves a wodge of notes at the guy, sticks the camera in his backpack, and walks away. He’s left the van on some rough ground a few miles out of the city centre, and he takes the back roads to get there. A stop at a small local garage to fuel up the van, and pick up a bag of caffeine fuelled drinks and snack, then he sets off back down the M1.

 

Fucking days of sitting around. He’s quit the booze, needs a clear head for this. He’s cut back on the cigarettes too, because he didn’t want anyone to get wind of him when he was lurking outside Ridley’s country pile, waiting for Ridley to go somewhere. Now he’s followed him to London.

Scott hangs around outside Ridley’s Whitehall office, but his reeking clothes mean he’s moved on by a cop who gives him the name of a hostel run by a charity for the homeless. All Scott does though is walk away, circle up one side of Whitehall, down the other, the entrance always in sight. Fucking tourists, stopping to take photos with the fucking soldiers with their red coats and big fur hats. He twitches when the big red buses block his view for a moment. Seems like Ridley spends the week in London, works late, returns to a flat in Parliament View. What a fucking life, almost able to see your office from your home.

Scott follows Ridley, dogged, to Whitehall each morning and back over the river. Maybe what he emailed the journalist was enough. Maybe the rumours about the family man are all wrong. He’s considering giving up when finally the man doesn’t go to the flat after work. Ridley keeps up a brisk walk along the road by the Thames, the same route Scott took that second time he visited Mikey in this hospital. Scott shambles along forty yards behind Ridley, taking a moment to pretend to check round a bin for fag ends. Gotta keep up the pretence he has nothing to do, nowhere to go, but all the time Ridley is in his sights. He scratches at his beard, feels the backpack tugging on his shoulders. He’s checked the camera, checked it too many times maybe, because if this is it it’s got to work. He may not get another shot, and all the time he’s here he’s worrying what’s happening to Mikey. The surveillance cameras he planted in the rehab unit don’t tell him enough, and after the attempt on his life last week Scott can’t take his safety for granted.

At the Vauxhall intersection Ridley turns and walks under the bridge. It’s gloomy dark, stinks of fuel pollution and stale piss. Scott’s closer to Ridley now, can’t risk losing him when there are so many turns he could take here. Ridley walks past Vauxhall Gardens, then slows. Scott slides up against the wall, tucked behind an abandoned delivery trolley. Down an alley, back entrance to the park, Scott’s all about the chase now, misses the feel of the gun in his hand. He’s not here to kill, though, he’s going to take a card from Ridley’s own deck, destroy the man with subtler means.

It’s growing dark, and he’s worried about the lighting. Ridley stops, looks around, and Scott falls back again. There are shrubs around the toilets, and it’s easy to lurk. Scott moves swiftly through the undergrowth. He pulls out the camera, lines it up, and clicks as Ridley goes inside. Scott pauses, checks the photo. Not brilliant, but it’s clear enough who it is, the light above the doorway sheds a golden glow. He can’t see what’s happening inside, hopes this will be enough to complete the construction he’s built up around Ridley’s lies. He waits, finger on a different sort of trigger to usual. Minutes tick by and finally Ridley emerge. He’s brazen enough to be still tucking in his shirt tails. Scott clicks away, but this time he lets Ridley go. He shoves the camera in his bag, gives it a moment, then heads to the toilets himself. The bad taste in his mouth has nothing to do with what he’s been eating. There’s no other way to do this, though. If he’s right, the remaining part of the proof he needs is waiting in there.


	5. Chapter 5

“No, I don’t want to make a comment.” Sir Charles Ridley is scowling as he slams the phone down. His polished wood desk is scattered with papers. He picks one up, scans it, then adds it to a stack of files.

There’s a sharp rap on the door and his assistant walks in.

“Michael Stonebridge has asked for a Do Not Resuscitate order, sir.”

The scowl on Ridley’s face darkens. “How? He can’t speak, can he? If he’s got his speech back you have a problem to resolve.”

“He’s using some sort of speech software.”

“Has he said anything else?”

“No.”

“Right. Don’t let him have his software again. He’s not going anywhere. I’ve got other things to deal with now.” Ridley gestures at the stack of files. “Take these for secure shredding immediately. Make sure you see it is completed. There must be no trace left.”

Ridley watches the man gather up the files and leave the office. He frowns at the work in front of him. Stonebridge is contained, he probably isn’t the source of the leak, so who is?


	6. Chapter 6

Now I’ve seen the pair of magpies, they seem to be there every time I look outside. Maybe it was always two, but I only ever saw one at a time. The sun dances in between the leaves and the birds release a shower of blossom as they land and take flight again.

The weather is finally warmer this week, and they push me outdoors every morning, as well as each afternoon after lunch. No drugs in my system I don’t sleep. I lie back in the chair and try to make sounds like the SLT said. What comes out will never in a million years form regular words, but they’re sounds, and that’s more than I could do last week. It raises futile hope in me, even though it’s pointless now. If I had last words, I couldn’t articulate them, and there’s no-one to hear me now.

I let her push me right up the garden today. There are enough tablets in my stash. I haven’t scented Scott for several days. I should just do it, nothing to hold me back.

At first I thought I should wait, should be sure that he’s here. My mind is clearer now, and I wonder if he is able to surveil me without being spotted. He must have been off his game when I scented his cigarettes. I know I wasn’t up to much then, could have missed all sorts of signs that I’d see now. I check no-one is looking and clench my fists, flex my fingers, stretch my legs. If I was attacked now, maybe I could defend myself. Maybe.

It’s a moot point, though. If I’m attacked now, I should just give in. My time has come, and I’m ready. I’m not afraid. It’s another battle, the outcome is certain. I’m choosing to lose this one.

I pry the top of the arm rest up. I need to give Scott a clear message. He doesn’t need to stay here for me. My hands are shaking, and it’s not fear. It must be just the comedown still, a week of cold-turkey jitters. But that’s all going to stop. It’s going to stop as soon as I get enough pills inside me. It’s all going to stop … the plastic cover flies up and pills spill onto the ground.

I let out a frustrated breath. I didn’t plan for this, can’t risk half measures, can’t risk being brought back. I scoop every remaining pill into my hand, stare at the ones on the floor. If I get down there, what if I can’t get back up into the chair?

There’s twenty pills in my hand, more than that on the floor. I don’t know how many I need, just plan to keep swallowing them slowly until I can’t take any more. I can’t come back from this. I’ve got to get Scott to leave.

I need to take then pills that are on the ground, I’ve got to pick them up. If I can’t get back in the chair, no matter. I don’t need to get back up this time.

For a moment, I can’t remember how to stand. I shuffle forwards on the chair, pause, push up with one hand full of pills, hover, teeter, crumple, sprawl. The concrete path smacks me in the face, and I lie there, stunned. There’s blood in my mouth, I’ve spilled everything I held in my hand. Pills lie scattered, cascade of white. I don’t know how I’ll gather then all up before someone finds me.

##

Scott drove all night after downloading the photos, the recording and sending the files to the journalist. The whole thing has left a bad taste in his mouth and all he wants is to get back and check on Stonebridge. He parks the van in the wood, clambers out, then saunters to the place where the trees meet the field.

In seconds he finds himself sprinting down the hill. He hadn’t expected to find Mikey outside already, hadn’t expected to …

He’s in the garden in minutes. Scott doesn’t take time to look round, not this time, he’s past caring if they’re seen.

Mikey is sprawled on the pavement, blood running from his mouth, pills scattered on the ground around him.

Scott falters, then feels for his gun. He’s been entirely wrong about everything. If this is what Mikey wants, if this is the fate he has chosen, then Scott can only do one thing.

He pulls out the gun, raises it to his mouth and puts his finger on the trigger.


	7. Chapter 7

Scott! No!

At least that’s what I want to say, but what comes out is “’Cuh, nuh!” but it’s enough, thank Christ it’s enough and he lowers the gun.

“Mikey?” He’s tucked the gun back in his trousers, and he’s got his hands on my shoulders. He rolls me over, hand on my face. “Did you take anything?”

“Nuh!”

I look left, look right. Someone’s going to see us. We need to move.

“We’re got to get out of here, Mikey,” he says. He has always been able to read my mind in a crisis, but it’s a short-lived relief. I push with my left leg, Scott puts his hands under my arms and I’m back in the chair and he’s pushing me through the gap in the shrubbery, over the rough ground and up the hillside. We’re out in the open, too exposed, but there’s something right about this, the two of us, the chase, the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Scott pauses as we emerge onto the road, then pushes again. He’s unfit too, his breath coming in gasps as he shoves the chair up a dirt track, and it’s all I can do to stay in it. We go off the path into the woods, and I can’t work out how the hell we’re going to get away. At the speed we’re going anyone could catch up,  but then I see the van.

Scott shoves the chair up close to the passenger door.

“Right,” he says, “Let’s get you in.”

My blood pounds loud in my ears as I push forward in the chair. I reach forward, grip the van door handle with my left hand, lock my right knee, push with my left leg, and I’m up, up, finally standing after all these months. I’m not used to being upright, my vision flickers, and I must have swayed because Scott shoves a hand under my arm.

“In you go,” he says.

He heaves me into the passenger seat. The relief at being free is overwhelming, free from the rehab unit, free from the fear that someone is trying to kill me, free from the thought that I have to do the job myself. Scott climbs in the other side. He pulls the seatbelt across me, plugs it in.

“We’re outta here,” he says. The van bounces over the rough ground, and we’re gone.


	8. Chapter 8

Daily Mail, Tuesday, March 7th

**RIDLEY’S VAUXHALL ROMPS!!!**

Senior civil servant in sex for cash scandal

 

The Telegraph, Monday March 13th

**Ministry of Defence Resignation**

Senior civil servant Sir Charles Ridley has resigned. His successor is yet to be named.

 

Daily Mirror, Thursday March 23rd  

**Ridley’s Death Rocks Whitehall**

 Shock death of sex-scandal civil servant

 

The Guardian, Friday May 20th

**An Alarming Cover Up Exposed**

Leaked documents from the investigation into Sir Charles Ridley’s death have exposed a conspiracy to cover up a North Korean plot.

 

News of the World, Sunday July 9th

**SEX, DRUGS and SECRET AGENTS!**

The hidden life of Sir Charles Ridley

 

The Times, January 1st

**Queens Birthday Honours List**

Posthumous award for bravery for Colonel Philip Locke

 


	9. Chapter 9

They’re sitting on the grass on the side of a hill, the van parked under the cover of a clump of trees.

“What are those fucking birds called?” Scott asks, adjusting his sunglasses. He takes a swig from the beer bottle. “They’re bloody everywhere here.”

“M..ag ..pies,” Michael sounds out as he glances over to the three birds that have just landed in the field in front of them. His speech is returning, just like the speech therapist reassured him, and he sends her a small thought of gratitude. It’s slow, frustrating, but he’s kind of grown used to that. Nothing’s the same any more. He can’t understand how he ever took walking for granted, but he’s getting fitter day by day and that’s okay. He picks up the beer bottle with his left hand, takes a careful sip.

 “Look, it must be starting,” Scott says. Sunlight glints off the sleek black car making slow progress down the Surrey lane, followed by four more. “Thought it’d be a bigger turnout. S’pose his friends don’t want to know.”

“Do men like Ridley have friends?” Michael asks. It doesn’t come out how he wants, but Scott seems to have no problem understanding him, and he was never a big talker anyway.

Scott shrugs. “Maybe not. Colleagues. Cronies. Partners-in-crime. Heh, heh, heh.” He chuckles at his own joke then suddenly sobers. “You know I didn’t mean to kill him. Set the whole thing up so people would know the sort of man he was. He could just lose influence, fade quietly from the public eye.” He looks at the grass, picks at the label on the beer bottle. “Fuck, Mikey. I was trying to do it differently this time. Never thought he’d top himself.”

“You didn’t kill him.” Michael thinks for a while. “He couldn’t bear to be …” He stops, lost for words as so often happens these days.

“…Nothing.” Scott finishes the sentence for him, like he always does. “Cold shouldered. Nobody.” He scowls down at the funeral procession. “After what he did to you, to Locke, though … Do you want to go closer?”

Michael shakes his head. He doesn’t need to see Ridley into the grave. The magpies have been picking at something in the grass, but now they startle at some sound and break into flight. “Nah. Let’s go home.”


End file.
